The stress level always ratchets up a notch or two at this time of the year. When you think about it we jam in an awful lot of activities into a really short window of time. To name a few we have: Christmas/Holiday card distribution, gift buying, holiday parties, gift exchanges at work, decorating inside and outside the house, picking out a tree, putting it up, hoping it doesn’t fall over (ours has in the past – so far this season it’s still upright), worrying about who is visiting who, etc. etc. Smack dab in all of this is a tradition that I’ve participated in since I was a young boy, and that’s the tradition of making (as well as consuming) Christmas cookies.
The tried and true standards in our house growing up included the ever popular Russian Tea Cake (aka Snowball, Mexican Wedding Cookie), Gingerbread cutouts, Sugar Cookie cutouts, and a few others. Maybe it was back then that I picked up my interest in baking, and today I keep the tradition going by being the one to do all of the holiday baking in our house. I generally make the cookies that I enjoyed as a child, and over the years have added to the collection with a few of my own favorites (Cranberry White Chocolate Chip cookies, Mint chocolate chip cookies, Chocolate Crinkle cookies, Peanut Butter cookies (sometimes with the Hershey Kiss on top, sometimes without).
This week I thought I would see if I could learn more about this tradition, and as usual, share any insights I picked up on.
History of the Christmas Cookie (from Wikipedia)
"The earliest examples of Christmas cookies in the United States were brought by the Dutch in the early 17th century. Due to a wide range of cheap imported products from Germany between 1871 and 1906 following a change to importation laws,cookie cuttersbecame available in American markets. These imported cookie cutters often depicted highly stylised images with subjects designed to hang onChristmas trees. Due to the availability of these utensils, recipes began to appear in cookbooks designed to use them.[1]In the early 20th century, U.S. merchants were also importing decorated Lebkuchen cookies from Germany to be used as presents.[2]"
- "Food Timeline: Christmas foods". FoodTimeline.org. Retrieved2009-12-13.
- ^"Christmas Cookie Tradition". NewEnglandRecipes.org. Retrieved2012-12-07.
Santa's Christmas Cookie Consumption
While I was trying to find some interesting information about our own consumption of Christmas cookies I came across other fun information about the quantity of cookies that Santa potentially consumes. This info is courtesy of delish.com. "According toAn Idea, If Santa takes two bites of each cookie served around the world, he consumes roughly 336,150,386 cookies."
American Cookie Consumption (I couldn't isolate Christmas cookies)
In case you wanted to know...it's been reported that the average American over a lifetime would consume 19,000 cookies (not including from our childhood). Info courtesy of the DailyMail.com. I've included the web address below. Linking it wasn't as successful.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3346769/Cookie-monsters-average-American-adult-eats-19-000-sweet-treats-lifetime-chocolate-chip-revealed-country-s-favorite-flavor.html
Popular Christmas Cookies - from mashed.com
I found this interesting article where they ranked the popularity of certain cookies. See if any of your favorites made the list:
Sharing my secrets - The Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Cookie
This version is slightly different from the one I make (I skip the nuts, and I don't usually drizzle the white chocolate over the top), but it's a fool-proof cookie that always brings me plenty of accolades anytime I bring it to a cookie swap.
Cookie Fun - I found a few photos from years past...
Enjoy your cookies (in moderation, of course), and have a great (and delicious) holiday season.
Dave
12/18/18
Next week: I'll close out the Christmas themed posts with a look at holiday music
